No clothes dryer and no air conditioning here. Clothes dryers really are a waste. Why spending money on what the air does for you in three hours all for free? Water heaters are not as bad as one might think although they use a high Watt number, they run only for very short time, usually for less than a minute. To use electric stoves to heat water, fore example, would multiply the power consummation by several factors, for the same ammount of water being heated.

You may also want to try those high powered LED light bulbs. They're expensive, but use hardly any electricity and they last for a LONG LONG time.

Yes, LED, but currently LED bulbs on offer here (matching form and soize of classic bulbs so that you can use them in your old lamps) are equivalent to the brightness of around 25 Watt classic bulbs, and far less. So far they are not seriously sold as bulb replacements, but as colourful decoration lights. Also, white LED light years ago was blue-ish, now is extremely pure white, whle the blue-white ones also are being sold. They need to make their colour more matching to normal sunlight. They will become brighter (as bulbs), and cheaper, no doubt.

In torchlights, they are already great and superior to classic bulbs, I have such a torch myself, a Fenix P5. One third the size of a cigarette package - but turns the night into day at 80m. :) In torchlights, they are great, also in bicycle lights.

Phillips has a nice colour-changing "wellness" light, which makes nice colours indeed. But it is way to overpriced, and I do not buy stuff with "wellness" stamped on it for principal reasons. :lol: Also, who wants his living room turned into a colourful fairground stand?

However, LED is the future. In 15-20 years, nobody will talk of energy savers anymore. and the youngster will not even know that this political product of hysteria and lobbyism ever existed.

There you are mistaken.

Electric water heaters is probably the most in-efficent device in your home. Yes normally they only run for a few minutes but the problem is they run for a few minutes severl times an hour every hour of every day. Wether or not you are using it. After a nice long hot shower the water heater may run for up to an hour to recover. As they get older they become more in-efficent. No the design of holding a large quantity of hot water to be drawn on demand while effective is not efficent.

Some solutions are to go with gas and / or a 'tankless' on demand water heater.

Solar water heating boosters are also quite effective. They dramatically reduce the 'delta T' or the amount of temprature that the water has to rise from to acheive hot water.

I would have put a tankless system on my home but two things stop me.

First I dont have gas available to me.

An electric unit draws nearly 100amps (at 240V 1 phase). The service entry for my entire home is 100amps. In order to accomodate the tankless Id have to upgrade my service entry. A bit cost prohibitave.

But far and away the gas tankless water heater is the way to go if you can. Of course keep an eye on fuel prices.

On the LED's they are offered now in a wide spectrum of Kelvin tempratures from crystal clear white/blue (popular for jewlery display cases etc.) To warm white more or less precisley matching the color of an incandescent lamp.

What you say is true these are not available as retrofit replacement lamps. The vast majority are offered in specifically designed fixtures.

Hell they even do parking lot lights with them now.

My wrong, I think I did not understand labels correctly. By water heater I thought you were referring to those electric kettles, you understand what I mean? what are they being called in English? They may have 800, 1200 or even 2000 Watt, but the latter heats half a litre in less than a minute. You meant the fixed wall or cellar-mounted water heaters, right? and there you are right, these things can be terribly expensive in energy consummation, even more so when attached to the house heating.

Eletric heating systems that store warmth during night to radiate it during daytime, are forbidden to be build anymore, at least in germany. Very long time ago, in the seventies we lived in a flat having such a system. My parents say it was madness already back then.

On retrofit LED lamps, I do not give up hope that these get improved, too. In fact retrofits are just at the very beginning of the design and quality developement, regarding colour and brigthnes. Individual, naked LEDs are already available in much better quality than being used in these bulb-replacements.

Yes Im talking about the typical 12-20 gallon storage water heater. Usually in the 2.5 kw range. The Number one power eater aside from your heating.

Heres an interisting site I acutally use for design from time to time.

http://www.oksolar.com/technical/consumption.html

For norway, sweden and finland the main problem is that the savings from changing bulbs will be significantly less that the ones used in the normal calculations. Most of the year (at least in Norway) the main use of power is heating. This means that the energy "wasted" by the old bulbs is just energy saved by the radiatiors and ovens. So the only result will be increased mercury emmisions (norway uses 90% hydro power so no savings there). Let countries decide what to do not some bourocrat in Brussels making policies adaped from some compromise which don't fit anyone.

Thankfully this latest piece of Euro trash wont affect me. Living on a boat the few electric lamps I have are all 12volt run from the ships batteries and additional lighting if needed is provided by parafin lamp.

That's one of the problems I have with CFL bulbs, there ain't no heat.
It's also an argument for replacing bulbs that give out more heat than light, though.